This invention relates to hand-held computer and communications apparatus.
In recent years, there has been a revolution both within computing and telecommunications which has placed great emphasis on making computing and communications devices more powerful, smaller, and lighter. This has applied in the areas of both computing and communications technology.
In the former, personal computers have shrunk first to the portable computer, then the laptop and, most recently, the palmtop. In the case of both laptop and palmtop the tendency has been to structure the device as a hinged foldable unit, with a screen-containing flap rotating about a line parallel with rows of keys in a standard keyboard. This arrangement has the advantage of protecting the generally sensitive screen when the device is out of use. It also has the advantage of preserving the efficient data entry achievable using a standard xe2x80x9ctypewriterxe2x80x9d form of keyboard. Millions of people are familiar with these and comfortable when using one, even if inefficiently by pecking with two fingers rather than using all the fingers and both thumbs. Attempts to dispense with the standard well-known typewriter keyboard have attracted few adherents. The generally oblong shape of the keyboard has impelled the use in many applications of a generally oblong xe2x80x9clandscapexe2x80x9d format screen located above it, and this is a feature of most laptop and palmtop computer apparatus.
In the mobile telephone field, mobile telephones requiring a power pack to operate them have been replaced by simple hand-held units with a re-chargeable power supply, but giving adequate performance to ensure their widespread adoption. The hand-held units generally resemble a stubby handset, and are normally used by holding the whole unit by the side of the head, with one end adjacent one ear, an aerial projecting from the top, and the lower end of the unit, containing a microphone, near the mouth of the user. As the power of xe2x80x9cmicrochipsxe2x80x9d has increased, suggestions have been made to enhance the basic mobile telephone unit with further functions. WO93/18591 GB-A-2291560 and GB-A-2297662 show three approaches to providing a mobile phone with a keyboard or touchscreen input. None of these constructions is convenient to use as the stubby handset overall shape is inappropriate, nor is the docking telephone handset incorporating a keyboard and adjacent single line display disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,661,659.
EP-A-0534478 discloses a combined mobile telephone unit and electronic notebook. A telephone keypad is mounted one side of a flap which can be lifted away from the main body of the unit to reveal function keys on the main body and additional ones on the back of the flap. Together these constitute a keyboard which may be used to enter notebook data. However, the arrangement is not convenient to use, the flap is only supported at one edge when folded out, and the screen display is small. The ease of use of a conventional palmtop is not approached.
In the area of hand-held calculators, some enhanced xe2x80x9ccalculatorxe2x80x9d constructions have been produced where the calculators have been constructed with two sections openable out like a conventional portrait format book. In several known such calculators the standard numeric and function key keypad and a relatively small display have been mounted in one half and a set of enhanced function is keys as a keypad set in the other half.
We have now found that if a folding palmtop construction. is used which folds about an axis perpendicular to the rows in the keyboard, combined communications and computer apparatus of great ease of use may be constructed.
According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a palmtop computer apparatus including a display screen and a landscape format keyboard, both mounted in a two-part foldable casing, wherein the hinge axis about which the parts of the casing fold is substantially perpendicular to the direction of rows of keys on the keyboard.
According to an alternative aspect, the present invention provides combined computer and communications apparatus including a casing having two portions hinged to one another and foldable from a closed folded condition to an open generally flat condition, a planar foldable keyboard and a display screen, both accessible when the casing is in the opened condition, the keys on the keyboard being arranged in rows running in a direction substantially perpendicular to the axis of hinging between the two portions of the casing.
Part of the casing may include an antenna which may be fixed or slidable between a retracted and an extended position, in both cases extending in a direction parallel to the axis of hinging.
Preferably the two portions of the casing are of substantially equal size.
The outside of one part of the casing, when closed, may be configured to enable the apparatus to be used as a mobile telephone with the appropriate actuation buttons or the like for this.
In a particularly preferred form of the apparatus in accordance with the invention, one portion of the casing contains an aperture and the other a screen, the arrangement being such that the entire screen and the main, usually Qwerty, keyboard are visible when the casing is opened, and at least part of the screen is visible through the aperture when the casing is in the folded condition.
The alpha-numeric keyboard, conventionally of standard qwerty, etc. arrangement, preferably takes the form of a continuous rubber resilient pad keyboard of known type which, by appropriate design, may be made to fold when the unit itself is folded up.
Switch means may be associated with the portions of the casing to enable the apparatus to know whether it is folded or flat, and to operate accordingly under software control, e.g. to prevent operation of the device as a computer when the casing is folded shut and optionally preventing operation of the device as a telephone when the casing is opened.
In a particularly preferred form of the invention, the keyboard for computer input and the actuation pads for the mobile telephone are formed as a single unit which, when inserted in the casing, extends across the lower portion, conveniently usually the lower third to half, of the open casing with the portion constituting the keypad for the telephone folded around to underlie the xe2x80x9cfrontxe2x80x9d of the casing when the unit is closed.
Apparatus according to the present invention has the further advantage of being well suited to use in conjunction with a so-called docking station. Part of the casing may have a connector set in it which may mate with a suitable connector in the docking station to enable a full screen display (conventional video display unit) to be used, e.g. forming part of a standard desktop computer. Data may be exchanged between palmtop and desktop computer in known fashion using such a docking station, or the docking station may effectively be used to convert the palmtop to a desktop machine, which may have other peripherals such as printer, scanner, faxcard etc. connected thereto.